The Irony of Life in Various Stories

Ali Smith is one of the most fashionable English writers—known in her homeland not only as a novelist, but also as a talented photographer and journalist. Her first collection of stories, “Free Love” (1995), won the prize for the best book of the year and the prize from the Scottish Arts Council. Then came the novel “Like” (1997) and the collection “Other Stories and Other Stories” (1999). Her novel “Hotel World” (2001) was nominated for the 2001 Booker Prize, and her latest novel “Accidental” (2005), which received one of the most prestigious English literary awards, the Whitbread Prize, was nominated for the Booker Prize 2005.

How to make sense of the uniquely inventive labyrinth of coincidences, luck, missed and acquired connections? What happens when you run into Death in a bustling crowd at a train station? (You know who it is, because your mobile phone goes silent when Death smiles.) And what if your beloved has fallen in love with a tree? Should you be jealous? From the woman chased by an orchestra of trumpeters under all the proper regalia to the artist who built a seven-foot boat out of antique copies of the novel “The Great Gatsby,” Smith’s novella heroes are astonishing, charming, sexy, and incredibly complex—just like life itself.